U.S. Pat. No. 5,164,904 ('904) and 5,173,691 ('691) issued to Sumner disclose an In-Vehicle Traffic Congestion System which provides real time traffic congestion data to drivers. The system includes an apparatus for gathering and formatting traffic data at a central location, transmitting the data to vehicles, processing the data, and displaying data to a driver. The '691 patent discloses a "data fusion" process for collecting the traffic data.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,206,641 issued to Grant et al. discloses a portable electronic device which receives and stores digitally coded traffic reports for a geographical coverage area. Upon request, the device presents traffic information relevant to a user-specified vehicle trip within the coverage area. Traffic reports are collected at a traffic operations center and are encoded and broadcast to the units in the geographical coverage area using radio frequency transmission. A touch-sensitive map is used to indicate the trip's origin, destination, and routings of interest. The device makes calculations to select and modify the relevant reports and the traffic information from the selected reports presented to users by synthesized or digitized voice and sounds. In addition to presenting the information on demand, the device automatically announces new traffic reports received by the device which are relevant to the user-specified trip.
Neither the Sumner or Grant et al. patents, or any other prior art of which the inventors are aware, disclose a means for selectively controlling a traffic information monitor system based upon a time that is input by the user or calculated from a programmed departure time.